Go to Original
How to Talk About Health Care
By Bernie Horn
The Campaign for America's Future
Monday 28 April 2008
John McCain will be spending the week promoting his health care scheme. The
crux of the plan is to abolish employer-based health insurance and throw middle
class working Americans to the wolves. It is market fundamentalism at its worst.
But I'm not here to talk about the policy details. I want to discuss message
framing. During an election campaign, when our ultimate audience is persuadable
voters, how do we talk about health care?
Let's first understand McCain's frame. His campaign understands one crucial
fact (if nothing else): About 95 percent of the voters in the 2008 general election
will be insured - the uninsured don't tend to vote. Extensive polling and
focus group research has shown, without a doubt, that people who are insured
are more interested in preserving and improving their own coverage than in covering
the uninsured. Americans want "quality, affordable health care." But
of the two concepts, they are more focused on affordability than on quality.
McCain is trying to convince voters that Democrats are all about covering the
uninsured while he, on the other hand, is all about lowering health care costs.
Understand that this is a good strategy because it fits voters' stereotypes
of Democrats (and is fairly true). To our credit, we focus on "universal"
or "single-payer" coverage, "Medicare for all," "Canadian-style"
health, and the like. But this is not good message framing for the 2008 election.
"Single-payer" makes persuadable voters - the swing voters who
will decide this election - think of bureaucracy, inefficiency, and bad
service (like the "typical" department of motor vehicles). You'd think
that one way to sell health coverage would be to refer to one of our nation's
great success stories - Medicare. Unfortunately, Americans have become wary
of Medicare, in large part because the Bush administration botched Medicare
Part D, the prescription drug benefit.
And unfortunately, many Americans have a negative impression of the Canadian
health care system. More important - because it applies to more than just
health care - Americans are not persuaded by comparisons to other nations.
If they were, we'd already have single-payer health care, strict gun control,
and voting rights for ex-offenders, and we would have abolished the death penalty
and signed the Kyoto treaty on global warming years ago. Americans want an American
solution. (You're going to hurt your eyes if you roll them like that.) This
is politics; just go with the flow. Evoking national pride helps us enact programs
that benefit our fellow citizens - so just do it.
But, you respond, these voters are wrong! We need to educate them about the
merits of single-payer, Medicare, and the Canadian system, you say. I'm sorry,
but politics doesn't work that way. You can't change people's minds in the course
of a campaign - that takes years and there's not enough time. No, our goal
is not to change minds, it is to convince voters that they agree with us already.
We do that by starting from a point of agreement - where polls show that
persuadable voters are on our side - and lead them to see that our solution
fits their preconceptions.
In the case of McCain's proposal, the key fact is that the tax provisions will
encourage companies to drop health insurance as an employer-provided benefit.
Fortune Magazine points this out by quoting an expert in the field: "I
predict that most companies would stop paying for health care in three to four
years," says Robert Laszewski, a consultant who works with corporate benefits
managers.
Put another way, the McCain plan will cause businesses to drop health care
benefits like a rotten egg from a picnic basket. The argument for McCain depends
on the idea that once they cut health care benefits, corporations will increase
our salaries to offset our loss! And no persuadable voter in America will believe
this. So if you're middle-class in America, this plan should scare the sox off
of you. This is Bush economics on steroids!
But also, look at it this way. There may be no more important ammunition in
the fight against McCain than his health care scheme. If on Election Day voters
truly understand this proposal, McCain will be defeated in a landslide.
So let's reframe the health care debate. It's not about Democratic coverage
versus Republican cost-cutting. It's about McCain's radical scheme to dump our
employer-provided health insurance coverage into a ditch.
-------
Jump to today's Truthout Features:
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.
Print This Story
E-mail This Story